50 QuickLinks

Saturday, August 16, 2008
"If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"
Perhaps it's just a coincidence that the sudden rise of inaccurate exit polls happened around the same time corporate-programmed, computer-controlled, modem-capable voting machines began recording and tabulating ballots.

Thursday, August 14, 2008
Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps' 12,000 Calorie-A-Day Diet
(4 comments) Swimming sensation Michael Phelps has an Olympic recipe for success - and it involves eating a staggering 12,000 calories a day. "Eat, sleep and swim. That's all I can do,"...

Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Most Companies in US Avoid Federal Income Taxes
(3 comments) Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress. The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period. Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

Sunday, August 10, 2008
Naomi Klein: The Olympics Officially Unveil "Police State 2.0"
(6 comments) The games have been billed as China's "coming out party" to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism: central planning, merciless repression..

Sunday, August 10, 2008
Iraq Demands 'Clear Timeline' For US Withdrawal
Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told reporters that American and Iraqi negotiators were "very close" to reaching a long-term security agreement that will set the rules for U.S. troops in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of the year. Zebari said the Iraqis were insisting that the agreement include a "very clear timeline" for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces, but he refused to talk about specific dates.

Friday, August 8, 2008
Major Discovery From MIT Primed To Unleash Solar Revolution
In a revolutionary leap that could transform solar power from a marginal, boutique alternative into a mainstream energy source, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn't shine.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
New Ron Suskind Book says White House Ordered forgery
A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. Suskind writes in "The Way of the World," to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein's regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

Saturday, August 2, 2008
Video: Camp Pendleton Martial Law War Prep?
(3 comments) Clear video and eyewitness account of a lot of very strange and unexplained activity at previously quiet military base.

Saturday, August 2, 2008
America's Economic Free Fall
Washington can act with breathtaking urgency when the right people want something done. In this case, the people are Wall Street's titans, who are scared witless at the prospect of their historic implosion. Congress quickly agreed to enact a gargantuan bailout, with more to come, to calm the anxieties and halt the deflation of Wall Street giants. Put aside partisan bickering, no time for hearings, no need to think through...

Monday, July 28, 2008
Study: Media Far More Biased Against Obama than McCain
Now there's a headline sure to make Rush Limbaugh's face a little redder. The claim comes to us from George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs, which has studied network newscasts for 20 years running. After analyzing the nightly ebb and flow of our current race, the center's researchers see a pattern...

Saturday, July 19, 2008
9/11: Press ForTruth
(1 comments) Excellent documentary following the "Jersey Girls" and 9/11 Timeline creator Paul Thompson.

Friday, July 18, 2008
YouTube: Send Karl Rove to Jail
A nice composite of footage clearly showing why Karl Rove has no business walking the streets.

Saturday, July 5, 2008
"The Luckiest Girl" by Nicholas D. Kristof
This year's college graduates owe their success to many factors, from hectoring parents to cherished remedies for hangovers. But one of the most remarkable of the new graduates, Beatrice Biira, credits something utterly improbable: a goat.

Friday, July 4, 2008
FOX News Doctors NY Times Photos
Happy July 4th from Fox! American journalism has sunk to a new low. On Wednesday, Fox News displayed photos that its editors had doctored of two New York Times employees. Media Matters has graciously provided us with the before-and-after evidence. Why has Rupert Murdoch's flagship television network stooped to such tactics? The Times had the audacity to run a piece about Fox's recent poor ratings performance.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Haig, Kissinger, Rumsfeld, et al Discuss How They Faked the Film of the Moon Walk
(5 comments) This might be the most amazing documentary ever. Haig, Rumsfeld, Kissinger, etc sit around a table letting the director get them drunk while they reminisce about faking the film. Kubrick's wife is then interviewed to confirm that Stanley did film it, and goes into detail as to how and why. After that it goes into the stratosphere with Nixon sending out half the navy to track down and stop a renege Colonel who mistakenly...

Sunday, June 29, 2008
"Obama No" by Adolph Reed, Jr. Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
(2 comments) "He's a vacuous opportunist.I've never been an Obama supporter. I've known him since the very beginning of his political career, which was his campaign for the seat in my state senate district in Chicago. He struck me then as a vacuous opportunist, a good performer with an ear for how to make white liberals like him. I argued at the time that his fundamental political center of gravity, beneath an empty rhetoric of hope...

Sunday, June 29, 2008
"The White Whale" by E. L. Doctorow, Jr.
What does it say about the United States today that this fellowship of the arts and sciences and philosophy is called to affirm knowledge as a public good? What have we come to when the self-evident has to be argued as if--500 years into the Enlightenment and 230-some years into the life of this Republic--it is a proposition still to be proven?

Thursday, June 26, 2008
Sewage Plant May Be Named After Bush
Tributes to U.S. presidents have come in all forms -- take the Washington Monument, the Kennedy Space Center and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, to name a few. And soon, if a San Francisco group has its way, there could be the George W. Bush Sewage Plant, according to The New York Times.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Nader: Obama 'talking white'
(10 comments) "Basically he's coming on as someone who is not going to threaten the white power structure, whether it's corporate or whether it's simply oligarchic. And they love it. Whites just eat it up."

Saturday, June 21, 2008
Countering Race With Class
(1 comments) In our us-versus-them culture, every political campaign is a battle to define who exactly the "us" and "them" are. Republicans typically say it is natives versus immigrants, Christians versus non-Christians and heartland folks versus Hollywood elites. At their most effective, Democrats parry by defining the "us" as the majority of working people, and the "them" as the tiny group of plutocrats who control the country.

Thursday, June 19, 2008
US Oil Giants Awarded No Bid Contracts Over More Than 40 Foreign Oil Companies
(1 comments) The Bush/Cheney Oil Junta is finally making it's big push, with gas prices soaring (for no good reason), domestic oil companies being awarded exclusive rights to service Iraqi oil fields, and the propaganda campaign for offshore drilling now in full swing...

Tuesday, June 17, 2008
This Makes At Least Two Serious Analysts Who Believe McCain Won't Be the GOP Nominee
(2 comments) It may take weeks, or perhaps even a few months, but the odds are John McCain will drop out of the presidential race for the Republican nomination before the first vote is cast in Iowa in January.

Friday, May 30, 2008
CNN's Yellin: Network execs killed critical White House stories
CNN's Jessica Yellin talked to Anderson Cooper about Scott McClellan's tell-all memoir and agreed with the former press secretary that White House reporters "dropped the ball" during the run-up to war. But Yellin went much further, revealing that news executives--presumably at ABC News, where she'd worked from July 2003 to August 2007--actively pushed her not do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administrat

Friday, May 30, 2008
Phone home: Purported UFO video to be shown Friday
The Rocky Mountain News is reporting that today the world might actually see who else is out there. Jeff Peckman claims he will reveal video of live alien to the news media.

Friday, May 30, 2008
Lost Tribes Discovered in Brazil
(4 comments) The BBC reported last night that an uncontacted tribe had been discovered on the border between Brazil and Peru. The National Indian Foundation, a government agency in Brazil, took these photos and published them Thursday.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008
John Bolton to Be Target of Citizen's Arrest at Hay Festival
John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations, faces a citizen's arrest when he addresses an audience at the Hay Festival in Wales this evening. George Monbiot, the journalist and activist, is planning the action because he believes Mr Bolton is a "war criminal". He said he was surprised that a "war criminal" such as Mr Bolton would be allowed to "swim through the politest of polite soirees – which is of co

Thursday, May 22, 2008
#1 NY Times page views: Academy Awards Red Carpet- not Spitzer, Super Tuesday, etc....
POLITICS ARE FINE, BUT SHOW US THE DRESSES: The New York Times online broke the Eliot Spitzer scandal, invested untold energy and money on election coverage and went deep on Heath Ledger, but those weren't the days that set total page view records. That honor goes to...the day after the Academy Awards, with its red-carpet slide shows, which presented the single biggest traffic day at 37.6 million page views.

Friday, May 16, 2008
"Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" by Lee Iacocca
(4 comments) The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don't need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do.

Friday, May 16, 2008
US Soldier Refuses to Serve in 'Illegal Iraq War'
(2 comments) Matthis Chiroux is the kind of young American US military recruiters love. "I was from a poor, white family from the south, and I did badly in school," the now 24-year-old told AFP. "I was 'filet mignon' for recruiters. They started phoning me when I was in 10th grade," or around 16 years old, he added. Chiroux joined the US army straight out of high school nearly six years ago, and worked his way up from private...

Thursday, May 1, 2008
The 50 Most Influential US Political Pundits
(3 comments) The Telegraph today unveils its list of the 50 most influential political pundits to help readers sort through whose opinions matter. These are the people who make voters sit up and take notice. They are the ones who political candidates and campaigns are constantly seeking to woo and influence. They include television presenters, newspaper columnists, bloggers and talking heads.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008
YouTube Video of Bush Admin Chief Economist Charging Admin Caused 9/11
Actual video testimony by Morgan Reynolds, the Chief Economist for the Bush Administartion 2001-2002 stating "President Bush, come out with your hands up!"

Monday, April 28, 2008
Why the Discredited Right Still Sets the Agenda and Dominates the Debate
It's a paradox: the political center has clearly shifted; what used to be considered "left wing" positions have now become part of the mainstream, and the views of the Right are now at odds with the majority of the American public -- and with reality.

Saturday, April 26, 2008
Senators Attack Bush Over Oil
(1 comments) Five senators accused the Bush administration Thursday of "coddling" oil companies and the Saudi Arabian government - at the expense of Americans' wallets. "The Saudis have to understand this is a two-way street," Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement. "We provide them weapons, our troops provide them protection and then, they rake us over the coals when it comes to oil."

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Vivekananda: The Necessity of Religion
(2 comments) Three religions now stand in the world which have come down to us from time prehistoric - Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Judaism. They have all received tremendous shocks and all of them prove by their survival their internal strength.

Monday, April 14, 2008
Marshall McLuhan... What Are You Doin'?
Mr McLuhan tries to explain in one interview how television changed everything...

Sunday, April 6, 2008
Video of JFK's Bodyguards in Dallas Being Ordered to Stand Down
(1 comments) This video shows the Secret Service officer ordering JFK's bodyguards away from JFK before entering the Grassy Knolls area where he gets shot.

Saturday, April 5, 2008
CLINTONS REPORT $109.2 MILLION IN INCOME OVER 7 YEARS
Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign has released her 2000-2006 joint tax returns, showing $109.2 million in income over the last seven years. In 2000, when the Clintons last made their returns public, they reported an adjusted gross income of $416,039. Since then, Bill Clinton alone has made $82 million from just his speech income ($51.85 million) and payments (totaling $29.6 million) from his two books.

Friday, April 4, 2008
Randi Rhodes: We Believe VIDEO
(3 comments) 37 min. Video: Randi Rhodes, who was suspended by Air America for saying something "unacceptable" about Hillary Clinton, spoke about what "We Believe". It's an excellent list of progressive values.

Saturday, March 29, 2008
A Message From John Cleese
(17 comments) To the citizens of the United States of America: In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Saturday, March 22, 2008
McCain Spiritual Guide Accused Gov't Of Enabling 'Black Genocide'
This past week, Sen. Barack Obama's former pastor Jeremiah Wright has come under heavy fire in part over comments that suggested the U.S. government had introduced AIDS into black communities. But it turns out he's not the only religious confidant to a presidential candidate who thinks the state has targeted black populations with death and disease.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008
"Characteristics" by Thomas Carlyle
1831 article: The healthy know not of their health, but only the sick: this is the Physician's Aphorism; and applicable in a far wider sense than he gives it. We may say, it holds no less in moral, intellectual, political, poetical, than in merely corporeal therapeutics; that wherever, or in what shape soever, powers of the sort which can be named vital are at work, herein lies the test of their working right or working wrong.

Monday, March 10, 2008
New Book by NY Times Reporter: They Knew, But Did Nothing
A March 8 headline reads "They knew, but did nothing," referring to Bush and Condoleezza Rice. According to a preface to the article: "In this exclusive extract from his new book, Philip Shenon uncovers how the White House tried to hide the truth of its ineptitude leading up to the September 11 terrorist attacks."

Friday, March 7, 2008
Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn: A World Split Apart -- Commencement Address Delivered At Harvard University, June 8, 1978
The humanistic way of thinking, which had proclaimed itself our guide, did not admit the existence of intrinsic evil in man, nor did it see any task higher than the attainment of happiness on earth. It started modern Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshiping man and his material needs... as if human life did not have any higher meaning. Thus gaps were left open for evil, and its drafts blow freely today.

Friday, March 7, 2008
Newsweek: Hillary's New Math Problem
Projecting popular votes precisely is impossible because there's no way to calculate turnout. But Clinton would likely need do-overs in Michigan and Florida (whose January primaries didn't count because they broke Democratic Party rules). But even this probably wouldn't give her the necessary popular-vote margins.

Thursday, March 6, 2008
Aldous Huxley's Final Essay: Shakespeare and Religion
"A name that is a household word, and a word that is on everybody's lips. How simple and straightforward! But then the inquiring mind starts to ask questions. Who precisely was Shakespeare? And what are the sorts of phenomena to which we apply the words religion and religious? Others abide our question. Thou art free. We ask and ask. Thou smilest and art still."

Thursday, March 6, 2008
"Nature" by Ralph Waldo Emerson
To go into solitude, a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars. The rays that come from those heavenly worlds, will separate between him and what he touches.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Obama almost as big with GOP as McCain
The survey determined that a quarter of self-identified Republicans rated Mr. McCain most likable, but nearly as many - 23 percent - chose Mr. Obama as most likable. And among all adults surveyed, Mr. Obama was rated likable by more people than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. McCain combined, underscoring the Illinois senator's appeal to voters across the political spectrum.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Newsweek: Hillary's Math Problem. She could win 16 straight and still lose.
(1 comments) I'm no good at math either, but with the help of Slate's Delegate Calculator I've scoped out the rest of the primaries, and even if you assume huge Hillary wins from here on out, the numbers don't look good for Clinton. In order to show how deep a hole she's in, I've given her the benefit of the doubt every week for the rest of the primaries.

Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Marc Cooper: It's 3:00 AM and Hillary is Dreaming
(1 comments) For two or three days, the Clinton campaign will spin itself -and the media--silly, breathlessly celebrating her overwhelming victories in Rhode Island and Ohio and her squeaker in Texas. After the confetti is swept and the champagne bottles are tossed a more sober reality will take hold... There is no plausible scenario in which Clinton can win the nomination. At least not democratically

Monday, March 3, 2008
Propoganda in a Democratic Society
To post-Freudian ears, this kind of language seems touchingly quaint and ingenuous. Human beings are a good deal less rational and innately just than the optimists of the eighteenth century supposed. On the other hand they are neither so morally blind nor so hopelessly unreasonable as the pessimists of the twentienth would have us believe.